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I was born, for good or ill, into a reading family. Not an intellectual family, for we did not read for profit, but a family that counted the act of reading one of the major pleasures of life. At a time when not every household took one newspaper, we always had three, and five Sunday newspapers, so that there was one for everyone and one over. The house was also full of books, and though my father was a man of simple literary tastes, I owe it to him that I had an early introduction to War in the Air, David Copperfield, Three Musketeers and She. We went in for quantity, one might say, rather than quality, and from the age of nine to fourteen, my major Christmas present was the enormous bound volume of Chums, with which I could shut myself up for a week for a positive orgy of reading.